PROMPT: Use five jokes the audience might not know about you to tell a joke via a story.
1. I belly flopped from a 30ft cliff and broke my tooth
2. I used to introduce myself by saying hi my name is Maria Victoria di Donato and I speak three languages Spanish English and Portuguese
3. I met Dylan O’Brien
4. I got broken up with and got a nose bleed
5. I read books with one song playing on repeat
Long before I’d ever belly flopped from thirty feet and broke my tooth cliff jumping, but long after I was just a little girl who introduced myself with my own soliloquy: “Hi, my name is Maria Victoria di Donato, I have lived in three countries and I speak three languages, Spanish English and Portuguese”; I was just a young 19-year-old who read books in eight hours while listening to Roses by the Chainsmokers on repeat.
That girl was very much in love with Dylan O’Brien, and very much in like with her very first boyfriend, a guy named Ernest from Sauga. His kill count was in the 40s, but red flags like that don’t exist when your young, dumb and naïve. Like I said though, her very first boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. Two months and six days in, that girl had a bad feeling and wore his sweater to her date with him. She picked him up from work in her white Lesbaru outback, 2011, and tried not to cry when he broke the news she already suspected. He was breaking up with her. So, you know, she did like most young women and called him a coward, laughed at him when he said he liked her for her wit and quirks, but ripped the sweater off and shoved it at him, saying “I knew it.”
He insisted she walk him to the bus stop, for there was no more date to be had between them, and she gave him the middle finger as he sat down on the bus, leaving forever. She sobbed as soon as she turned around, and then she stopped, shocked by the sight of blood all over her shirt. Her nose was bleeding. She’s got two great snap memories or her tears wiping her blood away as she sat outside her Lesbaru, crying and angry.
Fast forward four days, she pretended to study on the Ryerson Campus. Ashe pretended to study only because she had just found out that her one true love was in Toronto, and she stalked and she stalked, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr her trusty companions on her journey down into the core of the Ryerson courtyard. She saw a crowd gathered at the TIFF theatre set up and asked, “Who are you guys waiting to see?”
“Julia Andrews,” they said. The girl didn’t even wait them out, the many times award winner wasn’t her target.
She turned around and kept walking, until she reached the exit of the theatre, waiting and taking a selfie just in case this was real. The door opened, and she turned away from it, afraid she was setting herself up for disaster. Instead, none other the handsome, charming, and most hilarious, authentic, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous!!!! Dylan O’Brien walked out.
My smile was huge in the selfies I got with him, and I was overwhelmed. In the mirror that night, I said to myself, you’re not allowed to cry tonight. Tonight, you aren’t a broken-up girl. You are spontaneity, you are hope, and you are bright – you met Dylan O’Brien!!!! Dylan….. O…. Brien!!!!!
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